Damir Markovina: We Shall Live Together

There is a bitterness in the face of the charismatic elderly Roko Markovina. “There is no justice in the world, nothing is fair”. He lives on an island and goes with a stick. He is doing gardening. Let me quote from the always competent publicist Dimitra Kouzi’s synopsis:

“Roko Markovina was a socialist member of the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War. A respected and widely loved public figure, he believed that, when war
came, it was his moral duty to lead by example and remain in Mostar with his family, even as the city was torn apart by ethnic conflict. They were soon driven out by nationalists from their own ethnic community, who branded Roko a traitor and seized their home. Although the family eventually recovered the house, they never returned.”

Why not, says one of his children, Dragan, “I lost my hometown” – the other son Damir is the one, who made the film – they are both in the film’s central scene that takes place at the dinner table and present is also the wife and mother of the two, Zinaida. I don´t want to live in a divided city, father Roko says, Mostar is full of hate. You exiled us, say mother and sons, and yet says the wife, whenever you have been there to visit, you come home telling that you met so many old friends, says Zinaida… and enemies, says Roko.

Excellent archive material shows Roko Markovina speaking in the BiH parliament, powerful he is and strong in his argumentation for a non-nationalistic country. He was appointed Head of Civil Defense in Mostar during the war, “I buried 386 people”, he says.

The 13th of October 1993 the family left their apartment in Mostar, actually they were thrown out by the winning Croat nationalistic party.

The film’s director, Damir, states in an interview with publicist Kouzi that “Reflecting on how best to portray the war we lived through in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I realised that my family is by no means alone in a struggle to accept the new post-war society and its rules. After nearly fifty years of living together, many families in BiH found themselves excluded by the new nationalist divides and factions.” He does not take a stand against his father, although he and the brother Dragan indeed reproach him for being so untouchably stubborn – your position had consequences for your family.

There is a lot of images from the childhood of Damir and Dragan, home video clips that are inserted into footage of today and archive from Sarajevo during the war is strongly there, so the place for the premiere is of course obvious.

There are not many smiles from Roko Markovina, and yet, watch the film and enjoy the ending scene with him and the director…

Croatia, 2026, 75 mins.

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️